An Oversight Regarding Clouds

May 23, 2016

To the Editor:

As a former director general of the Met Office in Britain, I was of course pleased to read in your paper (“Coaxing the Eyes Upward,” May 7-8) that the World Meterorological Organisation and the Royal Meteorological Society have been considering a new type of cloud in their classification, stimulated by the author Gavin Pretor-Pinney.

But although your article quite rightly reminded us about Luke Howard’s classification (in Latin in 1803), I am afraid it failed to do justice to the famous French biologist and geophysicist J.B. Lamark whose classification (in French) was published in 1802. The WMO noted this oversight in their report on clouds in 1939.

But I am afraid that prejudice against French discoveries in meteorology continue to be overlooked when they are published in French. Although Lamark is most famous for being, in Darwin’s words, “the first man whose conclusions on this subject (of origin of species) excited much attention,” he should also be remembered as the originator of a French Met Office about 50 years before those in Europe and USA. But Napoleon did not approve of his meteorological reports and his office was abolished in 1810.

JULIAN HUNT

London

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